More than two decades after Jassi Jaissi Koi Nahin made her a household name, Mona Singh is deliberately choosing characters that challenge the image audiences first associated with her. From police officers and mothers to gangsters and emotionally complex women, the actor says the biggest attraction in a script is the possibility of surprising people.
At 21, Mona Singh was trying to get her first major acting opportunity.
At 44, she has a very different problem: making sure audiences do not know what she will do next.
The actor who became synonymous with the braces, glasses and unconventional makeover of Jassi in Jassi Jaissi Koi Nahin has spent much of the past two decades moving away from the character that launched her career.
That journey has taken her through television, reality shows, hosting, Bollywood and streaming. And as her filmography has expanded, so has the range of women she is willing to play.
In 2026 alone, Singh has appeared in several dramatically different roles, including characters in Happy Patel: Khatarnak Jasoos, Border 2, Pritam and Pedro and Subedaar, while continuing her acclaimed work as Sub-Inspector Dhanwant Kaur in Kohrra 2.
For Singh, however, the objective is not simply to collect different roles.
It is to avoid becoming predictable.
“My goal is to keep surprising people,” Singh said. “At this stage in my career, that’s what excites me the most, doing something where the audience watches me and says, ‘Oh, I didn’t expect Mona to do this.’”
From wanting any opportunity to choosing the right one
Singh’s early career was built on persistence.
Before she was cast as Jassi, she travelled from Pune to Mumbai for auditions, sometimes making the journey by bus, attending meetings and then returning home.
She has recalled going through numerous auditions before finally getting the role that would change her career.
The circumstances surrounding Jassi Jaissi Koi Nahin now seem almost perfectly suited to her eventual career philosophy.
The role required Singh to transform herself physically and convincingly portray a young woman whose appearance and personality were deliberately constructed to challenge conventional ideas of a television heroine.
At the time, Singh was simply grateful for the opportunity.
Today, she has the luxury — and the experience — to be selective.
“For me, a character is always the starting point,” she has said. “I ask myself, ‘Have I done this before? Can I bring something new to it? Is there something in this character that excites me?’”
That question has become central to the choices she makes.
“I don’t want to repeat myself,” Singh added. “That’s why I have consciously taken risks throughout my career. Sometimes they work, and sometimes they don’t, but I would rather take that chance than do the same thing again.”
The roles are getting darker, stranger and more complicated
The difference between Jassi and Singh’s recent characters is striking.
In Happy Patel: Khatarnak Jasoos, she plays a Goan gangster in Vir Das’s spy comedy.
In Border 2, she takes on the role of a military wife and mother.
Her other recent work has included emotionally demanding maternal roles, while Subedaar gives her another opportunity to inhabit a character far removed from the woman audiences first knew.
Then there is Kohrra 2, where Singh plays Sub-Inspector Dhanwant Kaur.
The character requires restraint as much as authority. Dhanwant is a police officer carrying professional pressure alongside deeply personal grief.
Critics have singled out Singh’s performance, with The Hindu describing her as a “powerhouse ready to implode.”
For Singh, the intensity of the role did not disappear when the cameras stopped.
She has spoken about finding it difficult to switch off after working on the series, particularly because the character was emotionally layered and required extensive preparation.
The actor worked with a dialect coach and spent months shooting in Punjab.
“When the mood of the show is so heavy, switching off isn’t easy,” Singh said. “I have learned acting on the go, so I was finding it a little difficult to break away from the character because it is so intense and multi-layered. I tend to overthink.”
That vulnerability is part of what distinguishes her recent performances.
She is no longer interested only in playing characters audiences immediately understand.
“I would love to play a really dark character, maybe a serial killer or a completely grey antagonist,” she said. “I have played mothers, wives, cops and many emotionally layered characters, but I still feel there are so many shades I haven’t explored.”
Why Kohrra 2 stayed with her
Dhanwant Kaur may be fictional, but the process of playing her clearly left a mark on Singh.
The actor has described herself as someone who tends to overthink, and the emotional atmosphere of Kohrra 2 made it particularly difficult to leave the character behind.
The role demanded physical and emotional commitment rather than simply delivering dialogue.
Showrunner Sudip Sharma has praised Singh’s approach to the part, describing her as easygoing in everyday life but deeply sensitive to the world around her.
That contrast seems to have worked in her favour.
Dhanwant’s authority does not come solely from the uniform or the position she holds. It is also conveyed through her body language, silences and accumulated trauma.
That is precisely the kind of performance Singh appears increasingly drawn towards.
The mother roles are changing too
There is one category that continues to appear frequently in Singh’s filmography: mothers.
On paper, that could look like another form of typecasting.
Singh has played mothers in projects including Laal Singh Chaddha, where she portrayed Gurpreet Kaur, the mother of Aamir Khan’s character.
But she has argued that the word “mother” does not automatically define the character.
The question is what the woman gets to do beyond motherhood.
That distinction has become increasingly important to Singh.
“My problem is they are often no more than the moral compass, the motivational speaker for the hero. I don’t want to do that,” she has said.
That explains why some of her recent maternal characters feel substantially different from the traditional television mother.
They can be flawed, frightened, angry, powerful, vulnerable or physically active. Their identities do not necessarily disappear behind the needs of the protagonist.
Singh is interested in women who have their own stories.
Her career was changing before the roles did
One reason Singh has been able to reinvent herself is that she did not remain confined to one medium.
When Jassi Jaissi Koi Nahin ended in 2006, she did not immediately try to reproduce its success with another television drama.
Instead, she explored other forms of entertainment.
She won the first season of Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa, later returned as its host and took on other presenting assignments, including Entertainment Ke Liye Kuch Bhi Karega.
Hosting allowed audiences to see a different side of her personality.
Anu Malik, who worked with Singh on the show, has remembered her as energetic and capable of lifting the mood of contestants before their performances.
Vishal Malhotra, another collaborator from that period, similarly recalled Singh as energetic and unpretentious.
That part of her career mattered because it prevented the audience from associating her exclusively with Jassi.
The character remained iconic, but Singh herself kept moving.
3 Idiots opened another door
Her transition into films gained a significant boost with Rajkumar Hirani’s 3 Idiots in 2009.
Singh played Mona Sahastrabuddhe in the hugely successful film, appearing alongside Aamir Khan, Kareena Kapoor Khan, R Madhavan and Sharman Joshi.
The part was smaller than Jassi but strategically important.
It demonstrated that Singh could enter a major Hindi film without attempting to recreate the television persona that had made her famous.
Singh has described the film as a particularly important experience because she was still relatively new to the filmmaking process.
“There were so many rehearsals, and I wasn’t used to that kind of preparation,” she recalled.
She also remembers the delivery sequence as chaotic and funny, with the ensemble cast bringing different personalities to the scene.
The film became a major commercial success and further established Singh as an actor capable of moving between mediums.
OTT gave her room to experiment
If films helped Singh establish another identity, streaming gave her an even larger playground.
Projects such as Made in Heaven and Kohrra allowed her to move into more mature and complex storytelling.
The difference between television and streaming, Singh has suggested, is partly structural.
Television characters can continue for years and may evolve according to ratings and audience response. With a streaming series, actors generally have a clearer understanding of the larger arc before shooting begins.
That can allow an actor to make more deliberate choices.
Singh has also credited OTT with helping familiar television faces break away from established images.
“Television actors are already very exposed to audiences because they are constantly present on screen, but OTT allowed us to take that familiarity and show people completely different sides of ourselves,” she said.
“You could suddenly play complex, grey, dark or mature characters, and audiences were willing to accept you in those spaces.”
For Singh, that opportunity appears to have arrived at exactly the right stage of her career.
Jassi was both a breakthrough and a burden
There is an irony at the centre of Singh’s career.
The role that made her famous was itself about transformation.
Jassi was created with a deliberately unconventional appearance, and Singh had to spend hours in braces, glasses and character styling.
Director Tony Singh has recalled that the actor was only 21 when she took on the role and that the physical transformation was demanding.
The braces were uncomfortable, while Sony wanted her to remain recognisable as Jassi throughout the show.
Singh has recalled joking about whether the makers actually wanted her to look attractive.
But she accepted the challenge.
The audience responded.
Soon, Jassi had become one of the most recognisable television characters of the early 2000s.
Tony Singh remembers her natural behaviour and innocence during the audition process as major reasons she stood out.
The role also came with pressures that Singh could not have anticipated.
She has spoken about the sheer volume of auditions she went through before being selected. Her co-star Gaurav Gera has also recalled an incident in which Singh was injured during production and returned to work after receiving medical treatment.
The success came with another unwanted consequence: fame arrived before Singh had much time to understand it.
She has recalled returning from shoots and hearing Jassi Jaissi Koi Nahin playing in homes around her residential society.
There was no Instagram or X to provide instant audience metrics. The feedback came through neighbours, relatives and strangers.
Her parents would receive calls from people expressing their affection for the show.
For a 21-year-old actor, it was an education in what television fame could mean.
Escaping the Jassi box took time
Being strongly identified with one character can be both an advantage and a limitation.
Singh had become famous precisely because viewers remembered her.
But the same familiarity could make it difficult to convince producers and audiences that she could play someone entirely different.
She has described the television industry of that period as offering actors relatively narrow categories, often dividing female characters between the “good girl” and the villain.
Rather than remaining within that framework, Singh eventually chose to move away from television and explore other opportunities.
The transition was not immediate or effortless.
There were periods when her next career move was uncertain. At one stage, she even considered becoming a cabin crew member.
Instead, she continued experimenting.
That willingness to take a less predictable route now appears to be one of the defining features of her career.
The actor and the entrepreneur
Singh’s professional identity has also expanded beyond acting.
She has ventured into hospitality with her restaurant Kona Kona in Mumbai’s Andheri West and describes herself publicly as an actor and restaurateur.
The move reflects a broader change in her life.
Acting is still central to her identity, but it is no longer the only thing defining her.
That independence may also contribute to her willingness to reject scripts that do not interest her.
At 21, saying yes was part of getting into the industry.
At 44, saying no has become equally important.
What Mona Singh wants next
The actor’s ambitions are now less about proving that she can act and more about discovering what she has not yet attempted.
She has named darker characters and morally grey antagonists among the roles she would like to explore.
That is consistent with the direction of her recent work.
She is moving away from characters who exist primarily to support a protagonist and towards women with their own conflicts, histories and contradictions.
Her career is also increasingly defined by the fact that audiences cannot easily predict what she will choose next.
That may be the most significant change from the early Jassi years.
The 21-year-old Mona Singh travelled between Pune and Mumbai hoping that one producer would finally give her a chance.
More than two decades later, the challenge is different.
She already has the audience.
Now she wants to keep surprising it.
And for an actor whose career began with a character famous for being transformed into someone unexpected, that feels like a particularly fitting second act.
